The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (best novels to read for beginners .txt) ๐
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Sometimes described as thrilling, sometimes as comic, and sometimes as metaphysical or spiritual, The Man Who Was Thursday is perhaps a little of each. The tale begins when an undercover policeman infiltrates a mysterious Anarchist group. As the novel progresses, things become more comic and improbable, and eventually evolve in to a sort of abstract, dreamlike state. Filled with Christian allegory, Thursday is a glittering, fascinating exploration of good versus evil and theology through the lens of adventure, wit, and the surreal.
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- Author: G. K. Chesterton
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Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Symeโs.
โThatโs a good getup of yours,โ said Syme, draining a glass of Macon; โa lot better than old Gogolโs. Even at the start I thought he was a bit too hairy.โ
โA difference of artistic theory,โ replied the Professor pensively. โGogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a portrait.โ
โI donโt understand you,โ said Syme.
โI am a portrait,โ repeated the Professor. โI am a portrait of the celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples.โ
โYou mean you are made up like him,โ said Syme. โBut doesnโt he know that you are taking his nose in vain?โ
โHe knows it right enough,โ replied his friend cheerfully.
โThen why doesnโt he denounce you?โ
โI have denounced him,โ answered the Professor.
โDo explain yourself,โ said Syme.
โWith pleasure, if you donโt mind hearing my story,โ replied the eminent foreign philosopher. โI am by profession an actor, and my name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimes the riffraff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him beyond his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I made myself up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the old Professorโs dirty old self. When I went into the room full of his supporters I expected to be received with a roar of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. They thought I really was the great Nihilist Professor. I was a healthy-minded young man at the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing eyes that the real Professor came into the room.
โI need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round me looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see which was really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he couldnโt be so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could not even understand myself. โI donโt fancy,โ he said, โthat you could have worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of differentiation.โ I replied quite scornfully, โYou read all that up in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically was exposed long ago by Glumpe.โ It is unnecessary for me to say that there never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of wit. โI see,โ he sneered, โyou prevail like the false pig in Aesop.โ โAnd you fail,โ I answered, smiling, โlike the hedgehog in Montaigne.โ Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne?
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